A Seeker Speaks / Thursday, November 27, 2008 / Steve Larsen
In recent months, we have
seen unprecedented upheavals the US as well as the global economy.
Big banks have fallen, as have insurance companies and brokerage
companies followed by huge losses in the stock market. It is
estimated US citizens have lost over a trillion dollars in their
pensions and 401K plans. As matter of fact, I know a number of
families, including our own, whose 401K funds were diminished by 20%
or more in a matter of a few short days.
The government’s
response, which was supported by both presidential candidates, is
notable in that it chose not to address the underlying causes of the
crisis, but rather to prop up a failing system with its 700 plus
billion dollar bailout. Yet it could have chosen another route and
that is to take a serious look at what really is wrong with our
economic system and what can be done to fix it.
The fact that
the government did not do this, however, really is not surprising
as the
public at large is generally unwilling to face these
problems themselves.
Of course, those who have the most to lose in all this – the big
banks, brokerage companies, insurance companies and various
conglomerate institutions who comprise what might be called the
financial or power elite in America certainly don’t want to address
the causes as they have a vested interest in keeping the system
running just the way it has been – with the deck stacked decidedly
in their favor.
The
symbiotic relationship between the haves and the have-nots
This
unwillingness to look at systemic problems of this nature is
essentially a spiritual problem. Jesus talked about the necessity of
taking the beam out of our eye as an essential part of our spiritual
growth. This means being willing to fearlessly examine any and all
conditions that prevent us from seeing the truth about ourselves,
society and all its institutions, customs and mores. And then do
what’s necessary to replace our incomplete and/or distorted ideas
with a higher understanding.
And regarding the current crisis,
while there certainly has been outrage at the government’s actions
and actions of the financial elite, it wasn’t enough to carry the
day to prevent the bailout from happening. And so far, it hasn’t
been enough for most people to seriously question the modus operandi
of the economic system itself. For many, the current system cannot be
challenged as it is seen as unpatriotic and un-American. They equate
the current economic system – which as we will see has been designed
by and for the elite – as equivalent with free enterprise. Thus for
many the system is a sacred cow that cannot be examined for fear that
it might be undermined or compromised and with it the American way of
life.
Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over
and over while expecting different results. If our economic system
has failed so miserably this time and in years past (think the Great
Depression as well as the never ending cycles of inflation and
recession) why then do people insist on doing the insane thing of not
questioning what is clearly not working? I submit it’s because they
have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and therefore
dare not question the beam in their own eye which prevents them from
seeing the futility of their actions. And in regards to the economy,
what is the nature of the beam that blinds us?
Before
addressing this, we need to establish the fact that economically and
spiritually speaking, there are two general groups of people. There
is the 2 percent of the population that controls 98 percent of the
wealth in this country – whom I call the power elite – and then
there is the rest of us. Please note that when I discuss the concept
of the power elite, my purpose is not to emphasize individuals who
comprise the elite, but rather my focus is on the mindset or
consciousness behind it.
By and large the power elite are
untroubled by the fact that they hoard the wealth. It doesn’t
bother them that two thirds of the world’s population lives in
poverty while they have great wealth. Why? It’s because they
need this disparity to maintain the illusion that they are better or
superior to the normal people.
This desire stems from the free will choices that many have made to
cut themselves off from God – as they think they know better than
God – and with it the abundant life that is given freely to all. And
to maintain the illusion that they know better than God, they do all
they can to keep God from acting in the earth.
Nevertheless,
without this connection to God, they feel incomplete. Thus, they
obtain a temporary reprieve from the gnawing sense of unwholeness by
gaining a relative advantage over the people by acquiring more power,
money, privilege, prestige, wealth, etc. compared to the masses. They
also maintain the sense that they know better than God because they
can demonstrate how powerful they are without God’s help. But their
gain over us is always relative. And when it comes to money, they
feel superior when they can reduce the amount of abundance we have
compared to them. When we are lowered in economic stature they are
raised in stature – relative to us. They do this even at the
expense of lowering the total amount of wealth on this planet. For by
keeping the people down, the built-in natural flow towards greater
abundance is thwarted.
Yet the power elite can not maintain
this sense of superiority in a vacuum. They need the regular people
to play along with their illusion of superiority in order to sustain
it. The regular people, however, generally do not have a desire to
feel superior to others but rather they have the polar opposite need
to feel inferior to the power elite. They have a subconscious belief
that the power elite will take care of them. The regular people are
happy that they don’t have to worry about running the economy
because after all it’s too complicated and so they are grateful
that the people whom they perceive to be higher than them will mange
the economy so they don’t have to think about it.
Unfortunately,
the people have entered into a mindset
of an idolatry of
the elite and so they believe that we must not let the elite fail.
And so the government bailout of huge financial institutions and more
recently the push for the bailout of the auto industry are acceptable
to many due to the blindness of idolatry.
The central dynamic
here causing this sense of idolatry is that the regular people on
earth have also – to greater or lesser degrees – cut themselves off
from God’s natural abundance. Not because they don’t believe in
God or that they feel superior to others but rather because they
don’t want to be responsible for making core decisions in life.
They refuse
to take dominion over their part of the earth and
therefore the power elite are all too willing to do that for
them.
So in the end, the people do not want to open the
Pandora’s box of the money system as they are afraid that
ultimately this will mean they have to make crucial decisions about
it and thus be responsible for it. And this is something they have
avoided for much of their sojourn here on earth. Instead, many people
have been running more or less in an unquestioning automatic pilot
mode. So you can see here that ignorance really is bliss – our
ignorance (ig-nor-ance) is the power elite’s bliss.
To sum up, the power
elite need the regular people to be in lower economic state so they
can feel superior to them. The regular people have a need to feel
inferior to the elite so they don’t have to take responsibility for
themselves and the economy. Both groups have an interest in
maintaining the status quo to prop up their unholy alliance. The
power elite are the blind leaders. The regular people are the blind
followers. The result is asymbiotic
relationship between the blind leaders and blind followers that
has lead to the fact that both groups have now fallen into the ditch
of the current economic crisis.
So how do we break this
gridlock between the two groups? I believe that like many things,
knowledge is the key. As it says in Proverbs, “with
all thy getting, get understanding.” I
believe people will be far less fearful of challenging the elite if
they are armed with correct information. Because when they truly
understand what is going on, they will see that the elite only have
as much power over people as we are willing to give them. Truly the
elite are like the emperor without any clothes where the illusion of
clothes was only maintained by those who wanted to see it that
way.
Why am I suggesting that it is the people that must
change and not the elite? Two reasons: First, the people have far
more to gain (at least in the short term) from constructive change in
the economy than the elite do. Second, the elite are typically too
selfish, rebellious and proud to be open to positive changes that
benefit everyone and not just themselves. This doesn’t mean the
elite cannot change, but being a realist I think the probability of
them changing in the near future is in fact very small.
Multiplying
our talents to produce economic growth
One
thing we need to understand about God’s design of the matter
universe is that there are built in natural forces that move things
forward even without our intervention. For example, there are built
in evolutionary forces that drive species towards diversity and
greater complexity. There are also
built in economic forces that lead to greater and greater
abundance in
the earth. The main factor is that mankind simply needs to understand
the principles behind this increase in abundance in order to flow
with its tide rather against it by blocking its flow.
I could
see how this could very well be a bit of a surprising statement to
many. This is because most of us been programmed to believe that lack
is the natural order of
things and that there simply isn’t enough for everyone. As we’ll
see later, this is a belief that has been perpetrated by the elite to
block the flow of our abundance so they can maintain their relative
superiority over us.
Of course right now it’s not so easy to
see this natural economic force at work. However, if you look at two
thousand years ago as compared to today, there is no doubt we
experience a far greater amount of material abundance and a higher
standard of living today then for example when Jesus walked the
earth. So we must be doing something at least partially right, so
what is that something?
Jesus’ parable of the talents
eloquently expresses the main dynamic here. In this parable three
servants are given varying amount of talents by a king and are told
to go out and use those talents to the king’s benefit. Two of the
three servants increased the talents which were then multiplied by
the king saying to them “well done thou good and profitable
servant, thou has been faithful over a few things, I will make thee
ruler over many.” However, the third servant was fearful of the
king and instead hid his talent in napkin whereupon the king promptly
dismissed him as “unprofitable.”
The lesson here is that
God has designed the universe in such a way as to increase our
abundance. The principle is that when
we put forth the effort to increase our own talents God multiplies
all our talentsaccordingly.
This is how individuals, society and economies grow and
prosper.
Regarding economics, there are essentially three
types of efforts that produce this multiplication effect:
1.
Putting forth labor to produce goods or services.
2. Introducing
new ideas, inventions and systems
3. Investing time, energy or
money in endeavors that stimulate the first two. In other words
taking some risk to promote economic projects even though you can’t
be a certain of a return.
Any one of these three separately or
in combination can have the effect of more abundance being created on
earth. The fact that there is a greater material wealth on earth
today than centuries ago proves the point that there is not a fixed
amount of abundance on this planet and that God has multiplied it in
accordance to the efforts we’ve put forth.
Yet even though
the standard of living is higher today than ages past, many people
are still living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to get by, and many
others are still living in abject poverty. If there is a built in
force in nature to increase abundance, why are so many people not
experiencing this increase?
The answer lies in understanding
how money works and how the money system can be turned on its head to
benefit the few and not the many.
Money
as an instrument
It
has been said that money is the root of all evil. But if you also
look at the good that has been accomplished through the use of many
we can see that this is not a balanced statement. A more nuanced
approach sees that money can be used for both good and evil and
therefore is a tool for either and not the cause of it. I would say,
however, that the love of money for its own sake is evil as we see
shortly.
Money can be seen as a tool for economic
transactions. As such, it has two primary functions:
1. As
medium of exchange for goods and services
2. As a short term
storage of value
In the ideal economy, the purpose of money is
seen as a tool and not and end in itself. For money to flow
properly, the
amount of money in circulation should be roughly equal to the amount
of goods and services currently produced in
the nation or economic system. Also, money is meant to keep flowing
and should not be hoarded. It serves as a temporary storage of value
because it is meant to circulate through the people somewhat like
blood in our veins.
In the ideal, spiritual economy, there is
essentially a
one-on-one relationship between the amount of money and the amount of
something that has real actual value,
be it goods or services. Or even, in the case of gold money, that the
gold itself has a certain value. So the point here is there should
always be a direct relationship between money and something that has
real value.
And when people actually
multiply their talents, they can, as a result of that multiplication,
accumulate a certain amount of money which they can then choose to
store for times when they may not be able to make the money. Even
this is legitimate, as long as the money was created as a result of
providing a real service to life, be it an invention, taking the
initiative, or performing physical labor. There is nothing wrong with
storing that money. Even so, it is only when it is put to use in
investing will it will help the economy grow. And thus, savings
should really only be a temporary thing and should not mean that the
money is permanently taken out of circulation.
For money is indeed meant
to flow and thereby help the entire economy grow.But you see when
there is a direct correspondence between money and something of real
value, it is not possible to create money out of nothing, money that
has no real value associated with it. And that means that even though
the money supply can grow, the value of money is not degraded, for
you still only have the money needed to buy goods and services.
And therefore, in a
spiritual economy, you
can actually have a society that has a steadily growing economy and a
steady increase in the money supply without
actually having an increase in the prices of goods and services. For
why would we need an increase, when you do not have excess money that
has no correspondence to real value? You still only have the amount
of money needed to exchange goods and services, which means that the
value of the money – what you can buy for that money – will
remain constant.
For an example of a correct use of the money
system, we need to look no further than the colonial economy prior to
the revolutionary war. During this time, Ben Franklin gave a speech
before British Parliament where he outlined the remarkable prosperity
of the American colonies. He attributed this economic success
primarily to the fact that there was only enough money printed to
make the transfer of goods and services possible.
Franklin
remarked: “In
the Colonies we issue our own money…in proper proportion to make
the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this
manner, creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its
purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay to no one.”
During
his speech, he maintained that there was very little unemployment,
the public was well educated and the people were happy. The British
were stunned and even outraged upon hearing this news and in
response, quickly imposed their dysfunctional economic system (run by
a Central bank) upon the colonies. The predictable result was that in
a very short time the colonies experienced an inevitable economic
decline. Franklin himself cited the imposition of the British money
system as among the primary causes of the revolutionary
war.
Although the success was short lived, it did demonstrate
that an economy could prosper based on principles mentioned above.
Certainly the Americans were industrious and ingenious and thus their
efforts were multiplied accordingly. Secondly, they only printed
enough money – called Colonial script – to grease the wheels of
the economy – and no more. Thus there were no cycles of inflation
and recession because there was not the intervention of the elite to
create the conditions for such aberrations of the natural economic
order to occur. Here we had the makings of an economy that was of the
people, by the people, and for the people as opposed to of the elite,
by the elite and for the elite. So how did the elite manage to create
the economic conditions that benefit them to the total disregard of
others?
Undermining
the money system
Although
the power elite have had their influence and grip on society
throughout all recorded history, it is helpful to begin this
discussion of the modern economic system during the middle ages and
the feudal society.
In those days, the power elite were able
to suppress and control the people through physical coercion. Anyone
who rebelled against the system found themselves against the strong
arm of unjust laws. Here, instead of multiplying their own talents,
the people were basically slaves who worked so the nobility could
maintain their privileged status. The power elite designed the system
in such a way to reap the rewards of other people’s labor –
basically reaping without sowing and thus stealing from the people.
They were also in the mindset of getting something for nothing. Both
of these conditions –
reaping the reward of other people’s labor and wanting something
for nothing –
are two primary perversions of the natural economy and the money
system that continues to this day. Essentially the power elite in
that day as in the present see the people as worker bees whose main
purpose is to provide them with lifestyle, shall we say, of the rich
and famous.
Creating
money out of nothing
Although
this unjust system was in place for centuries, from the power elite’s
perspective, there was a fundamental flaw in its design. Namely, when
people are physically forced into a type of slavery they can’t help
noticing that they are in fact enslaved. This will inevitably lead to
rebellion and eventually did lead to the undoing of the system. The
elite eventually recognized that it was far better for them
to enslave
people in such a way that they don’t notice that they are enslaved.
And so this is what they did.
Centuries ago when the European
kings began to go to war against each other, they realized they
didn’t have the financial means to do it. So where did they get the
money? Well around the same time, a concurrent but related
development evolved which served the kings purposes. This development
came from the fact that gold smiths (merchants who stored gold for a
fee) in that day began lending out the gold in their reserves. They
soon discovered that it was highly unlikely that all the gold in
their reserves would ever be lent out at the same time – so they
began to secretly lend out more gold than they actually had in their
reserves and charging interest on it as well. This eventually led to
writing promissory paper notes against these reserves which became
the forerunners of the modern economic system known as fractional
reserve banking.
Knowing
that the kings needed money to finance their wars, these financiers
convinced the kings to solve their financial problem and finance
their wars by taking out loans from them. The loans
themselves consisted
of money that these financiers created out of nothing.
What’s more, on the advice of these money changers, the king
declared that this new money created out of nothing – or fiat money
or money by decree – needed to be accepted by the king’s subjects
as legal tender.
The result was that there was now more money
in circulation than was needed to facilitate the transfer of goods
and services. There was no
longer a one to one correspondence between money and something of
real value.
The effect of this is that prices invariably go up – for three
primary reasons:
1. There is now more money chasing after the
same amount of things of value.
2. The first to receive the newly
printed money – the power elite – bid up the prices of commodities as
they compete for them while prices are still relatively lower.
3.
The money changers charge interest on money created out nothing which
can be viewed as an added tax on all commodities purchased through
the loans.
The
devaluation of the people’s labor
The
problem with this back then which has continued to this day is that
the effect that too much money in circulation disassociated from
something of real value is that the
value of the people’s labor is degraded.
This is because when the price of goods and services goes up, people
still only work x number of hours for x amount of dollars. So at the
end of the day, their money simply doesn’t buy what it did before
there was the influx of money into the system. This is why people
have to work harder and harder just to make ends meet. They don’t
understand why this is happening, they only know that their money
doesn’t stretch like it used to and so they have to roll up their
sleeves and work harder just to stay afloat.
So this is how
the rich
get richer and the poor get poorer.
The rich are the first to get the newly printed money before prices
increase and before these increases filter through the economy and
effects the prices of all goods and services. This gives the power
elite the advantage of purchasing commodities at lower prices than
the rest of us enabling them to acquire more and more while the
people struggle for a smaller and smaller portion of the pie. So
essentially what what has been going on for centuries is a hidden but
nonethelessmassive
redistribution of wealth from the poor and middle class to
the weathiest of the wealthy. Americans tend to get up in arms, and
rightly so I might add, when socialists attempt to forcibly
redistribute the wealth from rich to the poor. However, few protest
when it is the other way around, as it has been for hundreds if not
thousands of years on this planet.
War
and hidden taxes
So
this increase in prices and the degradation of the value of the
people’s labor was and remains to this day ahidden
tax on the people to
accomplish the objectives of the power elite. This is how most of the
wars for the last several hundred years have been financed. If the
leaders went to the people and told them they would have to be taxed
to finance their wars, the people would likely revolt and the taxes
would not be levied and wars would not be fought. Yet because the tax
is disguised as inflation, the people don’t notice they are being
taxed because it doesn’t appear on their tax bill or paycheck. They
only notice they have to work harder and harder for less and less –
then the power elite have a far better chance of getting them to not
only finance their wars, but to fight in them as well.
For
example, do you think in 2003 if George Bush would have went to the
people and told them that everyone in the United States would be
taxed, say, $2,000 to finance the war in Iraq – a war that many
people were unsure about – that the people would have approved
this? Not likely. So instead of taxing the people, the power elite
(in the form of the US government) simply fired up the money machine
and created money out of nothing to finance the Iraq war as they have
done for hundreds of years.
In fact, if you want to look for
the driving engine behind wars, follow the money trail. If you do,
you’ll see that in most cases wars are funded by banks are other
financiers who often times fund
both sides of any given conflict.
For example, although there was supposed to be a great ideological
divide between capitalism and communism, it is a not so well known
fact that the Bolshevik revolution and the subsequent build up of the
Soviet army (as well as the US military build up in response) was
funded in part by Wall Street and other powerful interests in the
West.
And when it comes to war, the power elite are able to
convince the people to fight them because of some supposed
differences over ideology, race, religion, land, politics, resources
etc, but it is always the people who fight the wars and not the
elite. Most wars are in fact, the result of infighting among the
power elite where a dominant elite is being challenged by one or more
aspiring elite groups or when any of them want to expand their power
over the people. The power elite use the age old strategy of divide
and conquer to get the people to fight their wars for them. Once
again, the people suffer at the expense of the elite’s gain. And
the people doubly suffer because ultimately
war cannot produce something of value it only destroys something of
value,
e.g., the destruction of people lives, their livelihoods, their land,
property, means of production, culture and entire way of
life.
Another advantage for the elite is that when they fund
wars, they know that governments are willing to spend far more to
achieve their ends then when not at war. Once again, when war is on
the horizon, follow the money trail and you’ll often find the true
cause behind most military conflicts.
And of course there are
many occasions where the elite create money of nothing to fund
government programs that are not war related. In that case the
dynamic is the same; the people pay a hidden tax when the government
does not want to tax us directly thereby stealing from the people the
value of their labor. For example, where do you think the money came
from for the recent stimulus package, or for that matter the
financial bailout of Wall Street? It of course came in the usual
manner of rolling the printing presses and then charging interest on
the money created out of nothing which has the inevitable
inflationary effect of devaluing the people’s labor and purchasing
power.
Underwriting
the dysfunctional economy
One
would think that if the power elite consistently created money out of
nothing that the resulting inflation would eventually make all money
virtually worthless. This has in fact happened in the last century in
pre-Nazi German and later in Argentina where it took a wheelbarrow
full of money to buy goods. The money wasn’t worth the paper on
which it was printed proved by the fact that some even burned it for
fuel. Incidentally, during the 1800’s and for 100 years thereafter
Argentina relied on a gold standard to back their money supply and
never had these problems. It was only when they switched to a fiat
based money system that they did experience the severe inflation and
the devaluation of people’s labor.
Yet for the most part,
the western economies have managed to avoid this calamity (though
with far less abundance then there could be) essentially because it
is the hard working people who have, so to speak, underwritten the
money system of the power elite. What has happened is that regular
people, those who do not believe in getting something for nothing,
have actually multiplied their talents and have thereby have managed
to keep the power elite’s economy limping along to a greater or
lesser degree.
So through the multiplication of our talents,
we have all been underwriting or you might say enabling the power
elite’s economy and thus it hasn’t totally collapsed. And if it
weren’t for this fact, this economy would have done so centuries
ago. This is because the greed of the elite who control the money
supply and policy
will not stop until they have killed the goose that laid the golden
egg –
which is the industry, creativity and ingenuity of the people.
The
Federal Reserve – of the elite, by the elite and for the elite
In
one sense, the history of the United States is the story of who
controls the money supply – the people or the elite. Although
America had the historical example of unrivaled success of the
colonial economy, with the influence of Alexander Hamilton and
financier Robert Morris, they chose to implement a system that
incorporated a strong central bank as the backbone of the economy.
This despite the fact that the Constitution stipulates that only
Congress should have the power to print money. To me this was an
effort by the framers of our constitution to ensure accountability to
the people inasmuch as they are represented by Congress. Yet the
United States nevertheless sided with the banking interests in
forming their monetary policy. This virtually ensured that at least
to the degree that banks and special interests were unaccountable;
they would most assuredly manipulate the supply of money for their
own selfish purposes.
Prior to 1913 however, there wasn’t a
Central bank quite like the Federal Reserve. In fact, the control of
the money supply went back and forth eight times between the bankers
and the government before to this date. There was in fact the first
National Bank of America founded in 1790, the same year that the
European monopolist banker Mayer Amschel Roschild boldly declared:
“Give
me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws.”
This system had the predictable effect of causing cycles of inflation
and recession.
The Central bank was in power up until the time
of Andrew Jackson who after great political battles in the 1830’s
was able to root out of the Central bank and return the power of
creating money to the government. During this fight for the money
supply, the gold standard was put in place to a certain degree and
did have some positive effect on balancing the economy. Even so, the
fiat system was still the primary method used to create money as the
Central banks still had significant reigns on the economy even if
they weren’t officially sanctioned by the US government. This of
course resulted in a number of economic downturns and debacles,
including but not limited to the following:
Panic of
1797-1800
Depression of 1807-1804
Panic of 1837-1843
Panic
of 1857-1860
Panic of 1873-1879
Panic of 1893 -1896
Panic of
1907-1908
Supposedly, the Federal Reserve was created to
prevent these economic meltdowns. Yet since it’s inception in 1913,
we have seen the following:
Recession of 1920
-1921
Great Depression of 1929 -1939
Recession of
1953
Recession of 1973 -1975 during the oil crisis
And of
course the crash of 2008
It’s obvious that the Fed has
failed to live up to its goal of preventing such calamities. So what
is the Federal Reserve and what are its real purposes?
First
off, we need to understand that the Federal Reserve is not
Federal and it really has no reserves.
From its inception the Fed has been and still is a consortium
of unelected
private bankers –
whose identities are largely unknown – who are therefore unanswerable
to the people. I’m sure you’ve noticed, for example that no one
cast a vote to make Alan Greenspan or Barnard Bernanke chairmen of
the Federal Reserve as this is an appointed position.
There
are no reserves in that there is no backing for the money that the
Fed creates out of nothing. The only backing is the implicit
promissory note of American people to keep multiplying their efforts
to keep the money machine afloat. The only backing is the perpetual
burden of taxation placed on the American people to fill its coffers
with money. For without their effort and these taxes, the Fed and the
entire economic system would surely collapse under its own
corruption.
It was brought into being by a secret meeting of
private bankers and politicians on Jekyll Island in Georgia and later
stealthily slipped through legislature on December 23rd 1913 when
most representatives had gone home for the holidays. In fact there
wasn’t even a quorum present when it passed the Senate.
So
the entire enterprise was based on a deception of the American
people. And as I said, it really is not a branch of the government.
In reality, the Federal Reserve is an instrument of the power elite
that serves three main purposes:
1. To enforce the fiat money
system where money is created out of nothing, lent to the Federal
Government, the interest of which is then placed on the backs of the
American taxpayers.
2. To control the money supply and thereby
control the people.
3. To prop up the major banks and protect them
from risky investments.
All of these purposes have the effect
of keeping the power elite in a superior status and keeping the
people toiling for their bread. It is important to note that all
money currently in circulation is created by the Federal Reserve. And
the Fed – which is again a consortium of private bankers – makes
enormous profits off of the interest they charge for printing our
money. The money the US taxpayers owe to the Fed is the national debt
that we keep hearing about. The Fed does
not care if we ever pay off the debt they
just want the magic money machine to keep rolling so they can keep
making off the interest they charge us for creating money out of
nothing.
The Fed controls the money supply by tightening and
loosening lines of credit to business and the public. In times when
money is more freely available, people multiply their talents, the
economy expands and businesses thrive for a time. When the reigns of
credit are tightened however, businesses fold and people lose their
jobs. The Fed and the elite profit in either scenario. In good times
they make money off the interest paid to the money machine. Yet in
hard times, the elite are right there to buy up the lost businesses
at bottom bargain prices and thereby expand their control over the
people and the economy.
Relatively few people today are aware
of the Fed’s negative influence as the power elite now controls
much of the major media where people get there information. Yet this
has not always been the case. The following are quotes from prominent
citizens regarding the role of Central banks in the economy.
If
the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of
their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks
and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the
People of all their Property until their Children will wake up
homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.
– Thomas
Jefferson
“I sincerely believe, with you, that banking
establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the
principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name
of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
–
Thomas Jefferson.
You are a den of vipers and thieves. I
intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God, I will rout you
out… If people only understood the rank injustice of the money and
banking system, there would be a revolution by morning.
– Andrew
Jackson
“The money power preys upon the nation in times
of peace & conspires against it in times of war. It is more
despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish
than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who even
question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great
enemies, the Southern Army in front of me & the financial
institutions at the rear; the latter is my greatest foe.
–
President Abraham Lincoln
“It is well that the people of
the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if
they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow
morning.”
– Henry Ford
“We have, in this country,
one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I
refer to the Federal Reserve Board. This evil institution has
impoverished the people of the United States and has practically
bankrupted our government. It has done this through the corrupt
practices of the moneyed vultures that control it.” –
Congressman Louis T. McFadden in 1932 (Rep. Pa)
“By this
means government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth
of the people and not one man in a million will detect the theft.”
–
British Lord John Maynard Keynes
“The financial system
has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That Board
administers the finance system by authority of a purely profiteering
group. The system is Private, conducted for the sole purpose of
obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other
people’s money”
-Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., 1923
“All the
perplexities, confusion and distresses in America arise not from
defects in the constitution or confederation, nor from want of honor
or virtue, as much from downright ignorance of the nature of coin,
credit, and circulation – John Adams
“Whoever
controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all
industry and commerce.”-James A. Garfield
I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for the American people to understand how our economy works and how the Federal Reserve and the power elite are stealing the wealth of the people. Even as I’m writing this, the headlines read that the Fed has recently spent over 4 trillion dollars in bailing out the financial elite in this country. This will have the predictable inflationary effect of putting too much money into circulation that has no correspondence to something of value. Unless something is done quickly, the Fed, out of their greed and their need to keep the elite in a position of superiority, will bankrupt America.
We need to take back the money supply from the elite and give it to the people where it belongs. We need to overcome our idolatry of the elite and recognize the power of God in each of us. God can and will turn around the economy but it won’t be by a blinding flash of a miracle from the sky but through multiplying our illumined efforts in creating a balanced and sustainable economy by utilizing right principles.
For these interested in a far more detailed and thorough analysis of the Federal Reserve then provided here, I would highly encourage you to watch the following video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7757684583209015812&hl=en
The causes of current economic crisis
While the fiat money system is the major instrument for the manipulation of money supply and can therefore be considered a meta-cause of our economic ills, I would say that the current crisis was precipitated by more local factors consisting of a combination of greed, arrogance and fear.
The problem basically is that many of the elite (and also many of the people in general) want to get something for nothing. They are all hoping that a minimal investment will produce a large return. This is essentially the gambling consciousness where everyone wants to win the big prize by investing relatively small sums of money compared to the sum of the prize. The trouble is, of course that in gambling only a few can win the big prize because if everyone won it the gambling industries would all go under.
So investors were essentially gambling on their investments – and these investments were largely held in debt based products derived from the mortgage industry. A few years ago, a number of new financial products hit the market that went almost entirely unregulated by the government (due to intense lobbying in Congress by many large financial institutions). The products, termed “derivatives” because they were derived from the reselling of debt (primarily mortgage based) leveraged across a variety of complex financial instruments.
The trouble is, as recently corroborated by the G-20 economic summit, the risks on these debts were hidden and while large profits were taken on them, these debts eventually came home to roost because the risk could not be adequately assessed, even by the elite. So what essentially drove the investors was greed and the idea that they could get something for virtually nothing. And that nothing really consisted of the mortgage debts which essentially came from money created out of nothing. Arrogance played a role as these financial institutions thought they had the sophistication to adequately assess the risk when they obviously did not.
So what inevitably happens when greed goes too far and things begin to collapse is that the polar opposite of fear rears its’ head. Fear then drives the investors and stakeholders to begin pulling out their investments when the financial industries start to go south. What we need to realize, however, is that all these psychological conditions of greed, arrogance and fear and the concept of lack itself are all illusions which only exist as a result of mankind believing in the ultimate illusion that we are in fact separate from God.
It is only when we realize as Jesus said long ago that the kingdom of God is within us that we can remove the beam of separation and all the psychological baggage that comes with it from our individual and collective psyches and begin to heal ourselves of all illusions including the illusion that only the elite can run the economy. For surely God can and will inspire the economy but it is only when each of us makes ourselves the open doors through which divine light and ideas can flow that this will occur. Again, we must not passively wait for a miracle to occur as each of us needs to become the miracle and then the economic ship of this nation as well as the world will be righted.
Monopolies and the proper role of government in the economy
The power elite not only control our economy through monopolizing the money supply but through acquiring vast monopolies in the business sector as well. We need to realize that we cannot have a truly free economy when other businesses are not free to compete against large corporations. If one or a handful of corporations control 90% or more of the market share in any sector of the economy, how can any smaller company effectively compete against that? And if there is not competition, what incentive is there for corporations to reduce prices? And so we see that not only is the value of our labor and spending power being degraded through the fiat money system of the elite, but our pocketbooks are further emptied through the high prices that many monopolist industries charge for their products and services.
Now before I continue, it should be noted that in last 15 years or so, there has been enormous influx of relatively cheap goods coming into America from China and as well as various third world countries. This has given Americans and other Western nations the illusion of prosperity where no real prosperity exists. This has the effect of lulling the West to sleep believing that all is well in the economy, which as the dramatic events of the past few months have shown, nothing could be further from the truth.
There is also the added problem that these cheap goods are being bought for a price. And the price is the welfare of the workers who produce these goods. For as everyone knows, most of the workers are paid sub standard, near poverty level if not slave wages and therefore when the West purchases these goods we end up subsidizing the injustices done to these workers by the power elite in those countries. This is clearly not a sustainable system. We must know that the universe acts like a mirror and so it will inevitably return the effects of the unjust conditions of our brother and sisters to our doorstep – some of the effects of which we may be witnessing today.
Returning to monopolies, the history of United States is unfortunately replete with them. From the railroads, to the steel mills, to the auto industry, to the energy companies and now technology companies (ever wonder, for example, why one software company has their operating system installed on 99% of the world’s computers?), gigantic corporations have been allowed through certain government regulations, to gain an unjust hold on market shares and after that no regulation is needed as these companies can effectively undercut all other potential competitors through the control of the market share and all the subsidiary industries and suppliers that feed it.
Again, free competition is the enemy of monopolies so the latter will do all they can to stomp it out. Therefore, the government can play a legitimate role in regulating industry and trade in such a way that no single company is allowed to obtain more than a certain amount of the share of a particular market. Now, there are some anti-trust laws on the books but these are typically either ignored or circumvented altogether by the large corporations. We need to tighten these rules and enforce them in such a way as to create a level playing field where all can compete. And when we do, not only will consumers get better products, but they will get them at better prices due to the competition among businesses who are given a fair chance to compete.
Look what happened in the 1970’s when the Bell telephone monopoly was broken up by the Supreme Court. Many new companies emerged and phone rates were by and large dramatically reduced. However, this safeguard against this particular industry was not sustained as today we are also faced with virtual monopolies by the likes of AT&T and a few others.
This means we need to be vigilant for as we know, perpetual vigilance is the price of freedom. This also means that the media needs to reform and start playing a far greater role in all of this again, as today they are basically the lapdog of the elite and not the watch dog that will sound the cry of alarm when such shenanigans and crimes in high places occur. If you don’t believe me, when have you ever heard any of what I have discussed in this article in the popular dominant media? My guess is almost never. When have you ever heard a criticism of the Federal Reserve by any major newspaper or major media outlet? Of course you haven’t because these outlets are controlled by the elite. Government can play an important role here by regulating what percent of any medial outlet can be owned by a single or corporate conglomerate.
The government needs to also play a role in regulating financial products. New products that enter the market need to be vetted for viability and risk and if the risk is too high or they threaten the stability of the entire economy then they should not be allowed on the market. The present crisis that stemmed from the derivatives based on housing market debt could have been averted if these products would have first been assessed using the above criteria.
So in a modern economy it is clear that government must play a major role to prevent the system from collapsing as well as helping the entire economy grow by it’s insistence on sound economic practices. This means that we need men and women of wisdom, honor and intelligence to step up into roles in the government. I believe there are indeed people with these qualities that God has prepared and are so to speak, waiting in the wings. And so part of our job as citizens is to help find these individuals and raise them up and then put pressure on the government to involve such people in the day to day governmental operations and decision making regarding affairs of the economy.
But ultimately, a government can rise no higher than the people who elect it. And, inasmuch as the government is a reflection of the people – and we get the government we deserve – we need to rise higher to deserve better. Therefore it behooves us all to raise our consciousness regarding spiritual matters and from this knowledge about economic matters as well.
And while on the subject of control, it must be recognized that very few people in this country are learning about the history of money and it’s manipulation in our nation’s schools. If we are to be and remain a free people, we must be an enlightened people. This will only come about when parents demand that children stop being programmed in the mediocrity of the mass consciousness which encourages students to blindly accept every lie spoon fed them by the powers that be. Parents must insist that children be properly educated about the economy and government in the schools or remove them from these schools altogether as many Americans have already done.
Conclusions
For surely it is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the abundant life – but we need to reach for it and multiply our understanding and love that the Father may multiply our own efforts to produce the abundant life here on earth. Clearly, God is infinite and so is God’s abundance. There is more than enough for all, we just need to bring it into manifestation by making ourselves aware of spiritual principles and how the abrogation of these principles have produced an economic slavery in modern society that far surpasses that of the Israelites who toiled in the land of Egypt.
Let us all demand that our government follow sound economic principles, many of which are outlined here. Let us rise above the consciousness that we need an elite group to run our economy when we know that the power of God can run the economy through us. You can’t solve a problem in the same state of consciousness that created the problem. Therefore, we must entirely rethink how our economy is run and tear down the towers of Babel erected by the elite and replace it with the rock of Christ principles. When we do so, we will once again have an economy and a government that fulfills Lincoln’s vision so eloquently expressed over a century ago – that is truly of the people, by the people and for the people.
Steve Larsen is a writer, producer, guitarist and singer / songwriter in Illinois. Find him here and here.
